It is my great pleasure to welcome Joni Klein-Higger to the blog today. A talented musician and author, she and I are in the same writing critique group. Please welcome Joni to the blog.
1 You
are such a multi-talented person. Please tell us about your early music; how
you began and if your use of the skill is different today.
Thank you for
your kind words, Nancy. For as long as I
can remember, writing songs came naturally to me. As a child I used to make up little songs,
whether it be about tying my shoes, going to the ice cream shop or jumping
rope—there was always something to sing about. I wrote my first completed song in high school
and continued writing throughout college.
Immediately after I completed my BA at Ithaca
College, two songs of mine got “picked up”—one by the 60’s girls group, “The
Shirelles” and the other by singer, Eddie Fisher. Unfortunately the songs they
recorded never made it to the public, but for the first time I realized I was a
“real” songwriter. From then on I took a
variety of songwriting and musical theater workshops in New York City and had
the opportunity to work with some of the finest songwriters and musical theater
playwrights in the country.
Since then I’ve had various artists, schools and
organizations perform and record my songs and one of my retro songs was
featured in the movie, PETUNIA. When I
had children of my own, my focus went from writing pop, ballads, rock and
country songs to writing children’s music and children’s musicals.
As far as my songwriting skills go, I spent many
years honing the craft of songwriting and continue to apply all those skills to
what I do today. The main skill I am concentrating
on mastering these days is trying to keep up with technology. The music world has changed drastically since
I first started out in the music business thanks to computers and home recording
devices. While I raised my children, I
spent a lot of time creating musical works but little time keeping up with technology,
selling and marketing my work. This
technological dinosaur is finally starting to catch up to music world.
2 What
prompted you to begin writing books?
Let me start
by stating if anyone would have told me years ago that I would become I
children’s book author, I would have thought they were crazy. I was not a strong student academically in
elementary school and high school, had little interest in reading and had no
desire to write other than writing songs. I stumbled onto writing children’s
books in 2003 when I was a Girl Scout Troop Leader. My
Co-leader was in charge the business and organizational aspects of the troop,
and I was in charge of creating fun activities to help the girls achieve their
badges. Lucky for me, the girls chose to
earn a literature badge, so I created an activity that involved each girl
creating their own picture book. The
“blank books” order came in a package of 12 – let’s see, 12 books, ten Girl
Scouts, two troop leaders, two books left over—my first picture book awaited
me. I decided to write and illustrate a
book about my beautiful Girl Scout troop (which included my daughter, Sara, who
later illustrated covers for two of my published musicals), and entitled it “A
Rainbow Of Friendship.” FYI, it only
took ten years of revising that Rainbow
Of Friendship manuscript, until it finally got picked up by Guardian Angel
Publishing—it should be released by the end of this year.
The first book I actually had published was based on
a children’s song I wrote called “Ten Little Latkes,” a Chanukah song I wrote
for one of the preschools I was teaching at.
My latke song was picked up by Hachai Publishing, and with the help of
Hachai’s wonderful editor, Devorah Rosenfeld, the song was turned into a
children’s picture book called, Ten
Tzedakah Pennies, released on Hachai Publishing in 2005. To this day this
book is still used in many Judaic preschool curricula throughout the world.
3. You
have been successful in combining the printed word and music to make musicals
for kids. Please tell us a bit about that.
In musical theater, each song needs to be an
integral part of the story and story movement while establishing time, place
and characters. Because the children’s
musicals I write are designed to be performed by elementary-school- aged
children (not “for” them,) I try to keep the production time between 30 and 45
minutes, make the songs a reasonable length so the kids can easily sing them
and try to incorporate fun melodies so the performers will enjoy singing the
songs over and over again.
I also try to include an ensemble dance number so the
performers can move around during the
musical, preventing stage boredom. For example, in my recently released musical,
Recycle – The Musical, I have a dance
number called “Rock and Roll With Me” that is a fun 50’s dance designed to
combine the rock ‘n roll energy of the ‘50’s decade along with dance movements
that are fun for the kids to do; as for story movement, this song introduces
the modern day kids to the 1950’s kids while establishing a new setting and
bringing new elements to the story—time travel.
 |
| Joni and fellow author Eileen Goldenberg |
4 What’s
next for you? Any more musicals or books for kids? Can you tell us about them?
It has been an exciting year for me, Nancy. My rhyming picture, Rainbow Of Friendship, illustrated by talented author/illustrator
Eileen Goldenberg, should be released sometime within the next few months. It
is the story of a red girl who moves from the comforts of her red town to
Rainbow Row City, only to discover that friendship comes in many colors, shapes
and sizes.
Eileen Goldenberg will also be illustrating I Have A Voice, a children’s picture
book I co-wrote with Dr. Flora Zaken-Greenberg, PhD, that addresses Selective
Mutism, an anxiety disorder that affects a child’s ability to speak. This
manuscript was recently signed with Guardian Angel Publishing, so it probably
won’t be release for another year or two.
And finally, another children’s musical, RED, which I co-wrote with the amazing
Jane Tesh, should be released by the end of this year. It is the story of Little Red Writing Hood,
who turns Fairy Tale Land upside-down with the help of her magical pencil.
5 How
can you be reached to purchase your books or musicals?
If anyone is interested in purchasing any of my
books, musicals or songs, they can find me at www.joniworld.com
and will have access to all of my published works.
Thanks so much for interviewing me for your blog,
Nancy. I am honored to be a part of it!
The chapter, in Saturday's Guardian Review, with new illustrations by Sir Quentin Blake, was found among Roald Dahl's papers after his death. It was chapter five in one of many early drafts of the book, one of the best-loved children's books, but was cut from the version first published in the US in 1964 and in the UK in 1967.
The chapter reveals the original larger cast of characters, and their fates, as well as the original names of some of those who survived into later drafts. Dahl originally intended to send Charlie into the chocolate factory with eight other children, but the number was slimmed down to four. The narrator reveals that a girl called Miranda Grope has already vanished into the chocolate river with Augustus Pottle: she is gone for ever, but the greedy boy was reincarnated as Augustus Gloop.
